In the conventional outdoor barbecue grill, food juices and liquid fats drip into the fire below causing flare-ups which often not only burn the food, but also normally leave difficult to remove residues on the grating itself. Typically, the grating of a barbecue cooker has not been thoroughly cleaned, if cleaned at all, from previous use and an unhealthy appearance and condition continues into subsequent use. Furthermore, unwanted odors arise from the heating of previous barbecue residues as well as from starter fluids. Cleaning, if done at all, frequently waits until the next day or later, increasing the effort required to remove the food and grease residues.
To overcome these problems, most attention has been directed in the past to minimizing, on the one hand, the contact of these juices and fats within the grill, and to a lesser extent on the other, with cleaning the grating itself. A number of conventional reusable and disposable products have been used for broiling foods in ovens, over permanent gratings, and in barbecuing cookers to collect food juices and liquid fats keeping them from reaching the heating source and surrounding structure, and collecting them for convenient removal and disposal.
Hungerford in U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,151 discloses a cooking protective food support that includes a plurality of raised portions (crests) and a plurality of lower portions (troughs), a second side being substantially an inverted image of the first side, which supports food to be cooked and collects cooking food juices. Thereafter, this scraped and brushed side becomes the bottom side or underside during the next barbecuing period time, and the heat created from the heating source serves to burn away the food residues and further clean and sterilize this underside. Light gauge aluminum or steel is formed directly into this barbecuing protective food support and this becomes a throw-away or disposable product after a few uses. More expensive, are those with a non-stick coating or those coated with porcelain, which evenso need to be disposed off after a number of uses. Other embodiments using thicker materials, not considered to be throw-aways, are molded or cast thereby adding considerably to their cost.
In another conventional device disclosed by Levin in U.S. Pat. No. 4,969,449, a disposable grill consists of a corrugated and perforated sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil, between 0.5-4.0 mils thick. The first set of holes in the corrugations allow smoke to access the bottom surface of the food being cooked so that the desired barbecue flavor is obtained. A second set of holes formed in the bottom of the troughs for fat drippings do not allow the drippings to come in contact with the wire grating. Nemetz in U.S. Pat. No. 3,555,994 describes a disposable foil cover for a grill of a barbecue to specifically protect the wire grating from being covered with grease drippings. However, this cover is only applicable for wire gratings having spacings perfectly aligned with the disposable foil cover.
Lucky in U.S. Pat. No. 4,637,303 discloses a cooking rack for use on a cooking surface in a vehicle or vessel which is bounced about causing pots and pans placed on a stove top or oven to tip over. The cooking rack has a plurality of perforations therein for receiving a plurality of securing pins. The cooking utensils are placed on or under the rack and the securing pins are placed in the perforations around the cooking utensils to hold the utensils in place. In an oven, the securing pins also extend through the conventional oven rack to engage the conventional rack and prevent the cooking rack from moving relative to the oven. The preferred embodiment of this invention comprises plate means and pin means made from stainless steel having a thickness sufficient to prevent flexing and warpage when subjected to a load.
One additional patent, issued to Sachnoff and Levin, U.S. Pat. No. 3,211,082, discloses a liner for oven racks adapted to be positioned on the wire rack of an oven for the purpose of protecting the wire rack from grease and other drippings which are normally deposited on the rack. This disposable liner, preferably made of 4.0 mil aluminum foil, has good heat reflecting surfaces and has troughs therein for retaining drippings as well as spaced openings permitting heat to circulate through the liner in the oven.
As can be seen, most of these prior art devices were designed to prevent drippings from coming into contact with a wire grating in the first place rather than cleaning them after the grating has become soiled. Furthermore, they are usually of the disposable type of corrugated foil having a short lifetime, or, if coated they become considerably more expensive and are still not suitable for continued, extensive use. If thickened to allow long-term use, molding or casting is required adding to their cost.
None of these techniques are really directed exclusively to the problem of cleaning heavily soiled barbecue gratings, for example, which conventionally are scraped or wire-brushed thereby damaging the surface and shortening its life. Another technique is to clean by brushing with chemical cleaners which is messy, hazardous and expensive. Others allow the residues to burn off incompletely with continued contact with the hot flame for extended periods of time dissipating much energy in the process and still requiring vigorous brushing. Many conventional gratings have Teflon.RTM.-like coatings thereon which abrade off when in touch with a wire brush. Some grill systems have automatic timers which turn-off the heat after a set time.